I put one small pie on a wooden trencher and presented it on my knees to Donna Giuglia.
She laughed. ‘I think I have been bested,’ she said.
Ser Niccolò took a bite, and he looked at me over his pie with pure, unadulterated approval.
I cut the pies as small as I could, and almost everyone had a bite.
At the door, Ser Niccolò took my hand. ‘I love a man who is not afraid,’ he said.
I assumed he was serious, so I shook my head. ‘My gracious lord, I’m afraid all the time.’
‘You were not afraid to make the pies. In public.’ He was serious.
‘I was afraid that they might not come out. It has been a few years.’ I smiled.
He didn’t return the smile. ‘But this is exactly what I meant. Wait, please. I want you to meet my son Nerio.’
I had seen Nerio all evening, and never known him to be the great man’s son. But of course, when I saw them together, it was obvious. Nerio was my own age, as handsome as his father, and at this late stage he had another spectacularly beautiful woman at his elbow, this one thinner and more otherworldly than Donna Giuglia, but neither more nor less magnificent. I knelt to her and to him, and he pulled me sharply to my feet.
‘By God, messire, you are a famous knight and a competent pastry cook, and I am neither!’ He laughed. ‘When there is steel singing in the air, I find a lady’s lap and hide my head there like a unicorn.’
It has amused me all my life, the different ways men boast.
I had a fine night. After I saluted Nerio, I slipped around the palazzo and in by the tradesman’s alley, and found the cook. ‘Here’s three florins to share,’ I said. ‘I know how much work you went to for me.’
He took the florins without hesitation and gave me a little bow. ‘You were truly a cook?’ he asked.
I looked past him at the circle of apprentices. ‘Never,’ I said. ‘I was a cook’s boy, and Master Arnaud would never have trusted me to cook a pie on my own.’
That made them all laugh, even the master. And as if he’d been drawn by the laughter, I saw Ser Niccolò appear on the servant’s stairs.
‘Sneaking into my house?’ he asked.
‘Offering my compliments, because these men made me look better than I am,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘If you always remember to thank the men that help you step up …’ He shrugged. ‘Where do you bank, Ser William?’
‘With the Bardi,’ I admitted. My Genoese bankers.
He nodded and cocked his head to one side. ‘They will fail – if not this year than the next. Your prince has served them but ill again and again.’
I was sitting on the same table where I’d prepared the pies. It seemed incongruous to me: Ser Niccolò was wearing the most magnificent grande assiette pourpoint I’d ever seen in crimson silk covered in gold embroidery, and he was leaning against the fireplace.
Well, I wasn’t his squire, thanks be to God.
‘Move your money to my family’s bank,’ Ser Niccolò said.
I grinned. ‘My lord, I’d move only my debt. I’m owed some ransoms, but another knight collected …’
Ser Niccolò smiled and made a very Florentine gesture with his hands, a sort of denial of the very statement he was about to make. ‘I know all this,’ he admitted. He smiled at me. ‘Give me your account, and I will find your money.’